After years of planning, the MTA has re-launched bus service along the Bx12 route, which travels through the Bronx and Upper Manhattan. A NYC Transit director for bus service planning, Ted Orosz, tells the NY Times, "It looks cooler, it’s faster, it will run a little more frequently. All those things should increase ridership.” The new "Select Bus Service" initiative includes more buses (up to ten more during peak hours), new designs on the outside......

What's a Mayor to do? When he's not trying to quiet rumors that he has a bad relationship with Albany, Mayor Bloomberg is still getting shafted by Albany. The NY Times describes the latest indignity: How a city proposal for bus-only traffic lane enforcement was shot down. The bill, which would have put cameras on the new rapid transit buses (the whole bus rapid transit system will be complete by 2011) to catch cars the......

Those lucky Staten Island residents that take the Victory Boulevard bus route have scored a victory. Starting next month, 300 buses on the route will be outfitted with special transmitters that can turn traffic lights from red to green. The transmitters will send signals to receivers on a 2.3 mile stretch of Victory from Forest Ave to Bay St that includes 14 traffic lights. Transportation officials hope that the new system, which will start......

Yesterday, The Politicker reported that Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver "quietly" met with Governor Spitzer and Senate Leader Bruno (separately) and that congestion pricing was one of the topics discussed. Silver has publicly doubted the feasibility of Mayor Bloomberg's congestion pricing plan, leading the Mayor to go on the offensive and try to shame Silver and other lawmakers for holding up the legislation - especially when there's $500 million in federal funds for the taking.......

On Wednesday, NYC Transit Authority President Lawrence Reuter announced he would be leaving his post in February. Reuter will be headed to Florida engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff - and to be closer to his grandchildren. Reuter has been president for 11 years, and we've had some good times with him. Remember when he told subway riders it would take 3-5 years to fix a broken signal room from the Chambers Street fire, but then it......

Nobody likes buses. Drivers can't stand sharing the road with them, and bus riders have to deal with traffic, lines to board, and late and infrequent service. But Bus Rapid Transit, soon to be implemented in New York, just might be the ticket to making buses sexy. BRT lines have a number of advantages over regular express buses that give them the ability to cruise down the road at near-subway speeds, for a tenth of......

Longtime readers may remember the Vision42 plan we covered at the beginning of 2005. Sponsored by The Institute for Rational Urban Mobility, the project would close 42nd Street to cars and lay down a light rail from river-to-river. Yesterday, Vision42 released their economic benefits study, which, if you believe it, says that a light rail would cost $500m, but generate more than a billion dollars in value. Don't get too excited yet-- according to......

We love this time of year, when the Straphangers Campaign hands out the Pokey Awards for the city's slowest buses. Usurping last year's winner M34 from the slowest spot this year was the M14A, which goes between 11th Avenue and Avenue A, and then down to Grand Street, and travels at an average of 3.9 MPH, which is what a healthy New Yorker speedwalking can do easily (average pedestrian walking speed is 3 MPH).......

Streetsblog has been covering the hell out of the livable streets movement in NYC. That includes everything from reducing traffic congestion to opposing huge developments like the Atlantic Yards. Check out these links they sent in this week: 1. Bus Rapid Transit Corridors The idea of BRTCs is that the bus gets its own lane, with a mile or two between stops. The cops police these lanes to keep other cars out. Today, the city......

We all know that city buses move slowly. Some might say it's because of traffic, double parking, the people who get off at the front of the bus instead of the back, but overall, we all want them to move a lot faster. The City Council's Gale Brewer issued a report on how to speed up buses and here were some of the ideas:- Installing bus-mounted cameras for better enforcement of bus lanes and stops;......

We got an email from the Straphangers yesterday, who directed us to check out the MTA's NYC Bus Rapid Transit Study. The MTA is looking to identify "corridors in the five boroughs that have BRT potential," and there will be public information sessions starting next week in all five boroughs. So far, the MTA is considering fifteen corridors:Bronx - Fordham Road/Pelham Parkway - Grand Concourse - Webster Avenue + 3rd Avenue Brooklyn - Flatbush Avenue......